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I walked alone on the beach watching the crimson rays of the sun awakening to a new day, the gentle flow of the waves sweeping away my footprints when suddenly... I felt overwhelmingly tired. I simply wasn’t quite back to my normal self after the attacks, and often found myself weary.

Glad that I was near the huge piece of driftwood halfway down our beach, I took advantage of our washed up ‘bench’ and eagerly sat, massaging my aching leg. My usual two mile morning walk now averaged about a half mile, but at least it was back up to that.

We call it the ‘beach tree.’ It must be twenty feet long and is quite literally the entire tree: roots, trunk and branches. It had been washed up the previous spring during that big Nor’easter and had stubbornly stayed put ever since.

Water-logged still; numerous pale branches worn silken from endless waves, it was always fun to see the latest cache of seaweed or shells tucked into its many pockets. Like checking for sea-mail, there always seemed to be a new surprise. Often after a storm I’d find a lobster entangled in the roots and once a kite, still flying; its broken string snagged an upper branch.

It was a local source of wonder. Wondering: what distant island it had been torn from, what storm had wrenched it loose, roots and all, to wash up here on our beach. How long had it floated before grasping its branches on our sandy spit of land. It was a convenient place to rest weary legs, a focal point for both the local and tourist artists, and a convenient landmark on one's daily jaunts up and down this empty stretch of shore.

Today, nestled beneath one of the sand-encrusted branches was an odd shaped clear bottle, complete with cork and note inside. No label. Nothing really strange in that, as children and tourists often threw bottles in out at the Point with dreams of its being retrieved and getting an answer back from some foreign shore. I had answered perhaps seven of them myself, always feeling I would be vaguely disappointing some child from Boston that the bottle had traveled only fifteen miles across the bay. Never did hear back from anyone even though I always included a return address.

Using my pocketknife, I worked the swollen cork out of the bottle and upended the bottle to retrieve the note. Childish printing. A school science project, I thought, noting the letter inside was signed ‘Mrs. Richardson’s 4th grade class’ at the Danforth Bay Elementary School. It was dated December 10th, 2001. Not bad, time wise, I considered….two months to travel across the bay and around the tip of our peninsula. I heard the flutter of wings as a hungry gull landed nearby hoping for a treat. I looked down to reach for the stale bread in my pocket and noticed the scatterings of white granules across my lap.